In a meeting last Wednesday, one of my bosses was reading topics that are trending and I was very pleased to discover that this blog has covered most of them, with one notable exception: cleaning. I think I know why this is. Anyone who knows me well knows that cleaning is not my strongest suit. It’s not that I don’t know how—I worked housekeeping at a summer camp in college. It’s not even that I don’t recognize the psychological value of a clean home. It’s just hard for me to make it a priority, and there’s a lot of all-or-nothing baggage in my psyche. Once I start cleaning one thing, I suddenly see the rest of the filth/messiness around me and succumb to the hopeless despair of my effort making a difference at all. I’m sure I’m not the only one out there with this issue. After all, caring for home and hearth used to be a full-time occupation for most women. Those of us born after the era of full-time homemakers sometimes feel shame from being unable to meet the same level of sparkling awesomeness while working full-time that the previous generations were able to maintain. My first paid job was to wash windows every week for a woman who worked full time as an obstetric nurse but held herself to these old standards. Meanwhile, I’m not sure I’ve ever washed the windows in my current domicile. Last week we talked about the social mirror as it relates to finances, but it applies to the area of cleaning as well. If you feel smug when you walk into a house messier or dirtier than yours, shame on you. These days, the old standards and the aesthetics of cleaning matter far, far less than the sanitary benefits. In the area of cleaning, the social mirror does little good: it can give you a false sense of security, it can lock you into an unholy cleaning arms race of diminishing returns, or it can make you want to give up because you know you can’t keep up. Forget that! You don’t need all that drama. The famous chef Anthony Bourdain remarked in his book, Kitchen Confidential, that he would not eat in a restaurant with a dirty bathroom. Why? Bathrooms are easier to clean than kitchens, so if the bathroom looks sketchy, the food can’t be trusted, either. This is not about the way things look, but about safety. Clean is not the same thing as neat, and they are often confused. A Pathfinder tent is certainly neat right before inspection, but you better bet it isn’t clean, especially if it’s been a longer campout. Meanwhile, my office at church isn’t very neat (my poor custodian gets very frustrated at my thinking in piles), but it is extremely clean (because of that custodian’s efforts). The two issues can be related—my husband has to move my piles to vacuum—but they are not the same thing. You do not have to have your storage spaces sorted and labeled to have a clean house. As we discuss cleaning this week, we will not bog ourselves down too much with the more Marie Condo territory of sorting through stuff and throwing things out. We’re going to talk about cleaning for sanitation. We’re going to talk about cleaning to beat the virus. This will be a challenge for me, because I know my own house is not without sin. This does not disqualify me entirely, though: if you struggle with cleaning, would you rather listen to someone who naturally enjoys it as a hobby or to someone who, like you, has actually had to struggle a bit to get with the program? When cleaning for sanitation instead of for appearances, every little bit is an improvement. You may not reach the high standards of a previous generation, but you will have the peace of mind of knowing that you are reducing your household’s risk of illness. It matters less that you attain perfection than that you start somewhere and keep at it consistently. Where do you start? We will discuss that tomorrow.
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AuthorJillian Lutes is the youth pastor at West Covina Hills Seventh-day Adventist Church. Archives
May 2020
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